This week U-M announced its general plans for the fall 2020 semester, which will include a combination of online and in-person courses. In keeping with this, and in recognition of the ongoing public health crisis, we will offer the Semester in Detroit program in a hybrid format. For this fall, all Semester in Detroit classes - including community-based internships and projects - will be offered fully in a virtual format and will be supplemented by optional small-group engagement experiences in Detroit. 

Our full fall curriculum will be open to undergraduate students from any U-M Ann Arbor school or college, U-M Dearborn, and Grand Valley State University. Students do not need to apply separately to the Semester in Detroit program to enroll in our classes this fall and are able to customize the course experience - take just one class, or all of them! Our curriculum will include: the long-standing Detroit history class taught by SiD Faculty Director, Stephen Ward; SiD faculty member Darcy Brandel’s Humanities course “Detroit Artist as Activist”; and “Grassroots Community Organizing in Detroit,” taught by SiD faculty member Diana Seales. In addition, for the third consecutive fall semester, we plan to offer a Healing Justice-themed “Detroiters Speak” mini-course. 

Reciprocal and relational engagement with our Detroit community partners remains central to our mission. We are co-developing plans with several Detroit organizations to host both individual student interns and small 2-3 person student-teams this fall. At this time, we anticipate that these academic opportunities for community engagement will be primarily virtual; however, we hope there are also some opportunities for in-person and on-site experiences for those students who are able and willing.  

Thank you for your continued patience as we build-out our full plans for this fall. Please stay tuned for our July 2020 E-Newsletter (to be sent later in the month) which will include more details on all of the SiD classes to be offered this fall, the specific internship and community project opportunities, and much, much more!